Ex-Financial Times Journalist Tom Foremski @ the Collision of Technology and Media

Newswatch 9.18.07: New Intel chips, YHOO buys Zimbra

[NYT] Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, told developers at its biannual technology conference that the company expects to finish the new family of chips in the second half of next year, in keeping with its latest promise of a new chip architecture every other year. The new architecture, code-named Nehalem, will use as many as eight processing cores, and offer better graphics and memory control processing.

[Mercury] Yahoo announced Monday that it has agreed to buy Zimbra, a maker of Web-based e-mail software, for $350 million in cash, providing the clearest indication yet of how the Internet giant is changing course to compete against rivals like Google.

[InfoWeek] IBM said Tuesday that Symphony, based on open source software from the OpenOffice.org project, will be made available as a free download essentially to whoever wants it. The package contains a word processor called Lotus Symphony Documents, as well as Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. IBM is calling the suite "enterprise-grade productivity software" and points out that it's based on many of the same tools found in its pricey Lotus Notes 8 e-mail and collaboration platform.

[IDG] Google plans to add a presentations application to its Web applications suite on Tuesday, delivering on a promise made in April. The suite, until now known as Docs & Spreadsheets, will also be renamed Google Docs on Monday. (Creative branding -RK)

[FT] Mr Jobs declined to detail of the revenue-sharing arrangement between Apple and 02, but the operator is expected to pass at least 10 per cent of the revenue generated by iPhone users from phone calls and data functions, such as web browsing, to Apple. (Some reports say it's 40 percent -RK)

[AP] With the expansion announced Monday, any Web site accessible through a mobile Web browser will be able to participate in Google's vast advertising network. The company previously had been serving up mobile ads based on search requests entered directly into its engine or its partners' sites.

[AP] The savviest hackers lock middlemen into long-term service contracts so they can automatically push the newest exploits on unwitting consumers and compensate for patches developed by legitimate programmers.

[Reuters] Alaska Air said it will test a system from Row 44, a provider of broadband communication for airlines, on a Boeing 737 aircraft in spring 2008. Based on that trial's outcome, it plans to equip its 114-aircraft fleet.